Today is my stop on the A Mind Polluted blog tour and I’m lucky enough to have secured a Q&A with the novel’s author, Martin Geraghty. As an aspiring writer myself, I focus my Q&A’s on the writing process. I hope this will be of interest to both writers and readers alike. So, without further ado, take it away, Martin:
Where did you get the idea behind A Mind Polluted?
When Jo Cox was murdered something resonated within me. I began to investigate what happened in Thomas Mair’s childhood and past, then I began to write.
How do you get your ideas? What’s the process and how do they go from vague inspiration to fully fleshed out notions?
My ideas almost always stem from human beings. Something significant that they have experienced and how they reacted to that experience is what intrigues me. For instance, I watched a documentary recently and was really moved by it. I contacted the person involved and I’m now in the early stages of writing their story. When a story grips me, I normally have the idea in my mind of where it will go.
Tell me about the research that goes into your writing?
My day job as a Private Investigator was a great help for some aspects of A Mind Polluted. There wasn’t much research required.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Most definitely a plotter
How do you go about plotting your stories?
For, A Mind Polluted, I had the central theme, that of an individual who allows a childhood incident to have a significant impact on their life. My first job was to create an incident in my mind that my character would allow to cause him great distress. From there, I began to create events that would highlight his behaviour, slowly but surely, becoming increasingly out of control and bewildering for his parents.
Tell me about your writing, do you write full time?
No, unfortunately not. Writing is job number two. When writing, A Mind Polluted, my routine was to write from 9pm until as late as possible.
When is your most productive period of the day?
Anytime that I have the freedom to write, no noise or distractions.
A Mind Polluted has an amazing sense of place, situated firmly in the City of Glasgow. I note you hail from the same area. Is any part of it biographical?
Not biographical, however, what I did use for Part One was a real sense of the place I was brought up in from the age of two until I was twenty. I used memories of the kind of families we encountered and their bizarre ways of life. For example, a family had a boat in their back garden, in the middle of a concrete jungle of a housing estate. The boat never moved and was used by the family as somewhere they would sit and eat fish suppers together!
What other writing projects are you working on? Will any of the characters from A Mind Polluted feature in future novel’s?
I wouldn’t imagine any of the characters in, A Mind Polluted, would ever appear in any other novel. I am currently working on the piece of non-fiction that I spoke about briefly in an earlier question. When I am ready, I plan on writing an altogether different novel to A Mind Polluted.
Finally, I’m going to shamelessly poach two questions the author Mark Hill (author of His First Lie and It Was Her) used to put to writers on his blog. Like me, Mark was a book blogger before he became a successful author and I like to think that the answers to these questions helped him glean valuable help for his own writing. Certainly, reading them on his blog is helping me. So here goes:
What’s the hardest lesson you ever had to learn about writing?
It is imperative for a novice, like myself, to have a strong, experienced editor.
Give me some advice about writing?
Immerse yourself in writing groups and spoken word events where you can learn from other writers. Read your work at these events. Listen to feedback. Be a sponge.
Fabulous! Thanks so much James x
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